Buddy Wakefield Quotes

I've seen fish hooked who keep more patience in their worst gill than some of you have in your best moods. If you were a sandwich at McDonalds, they'd call you the McGrump.

If you've never been rocked back by the presence of purpose this poem is too soon for you. Return to your mediocrity, plug it into an amplifier and rethink yourself.

In the dream I was onstage and there were thousands of you goin' bananas for me, all laughing and clapping, celebrating your brains out, not because I was somethin' else up there, but because you were just so happy I was finally starting to get it.

Love makes no mistakes.

There is a point when tears don't work to wash things away anymore. Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers.

I have realized that the moon
did not have to be full for us to love it.
That we are not tragedies
stranded here beneath it.

I choose to politely ask myself to step aside if I am in my own way. If I do not get out of my way, I choose to call a friend who will have me removed.

I'm no longer interested in watching you rise from the falls you keep taking in vain just for a reason to stand.

Dear Angry Older People, over 21-ish, anyone who considers themselves an adult, still bitter: Next time you're wondering what wrong with kids today, you might wanna check the examples you've been giving us to work with. Because if you ever want to make sense of us, you've got to make sense to us, without telling us you're too old to walk that far. You've got to try to understand why we like looking like rag dolls, why we like looking like the way we feel, and why we keep our senses floored when it's you behind the wheel. And if you ever really do want to understand why we seem so angry, well for one, you told us we could be anything we wanted to be, but right now, we're a little busy dodging bombs.

There are massive stacks of bad choices in my backyard.
Haven't finished cleaning the place up
but I'm workin' on it
and clearly I have not yet reached enlightenment
for more than a fleeting moment
but I'm tryin'
and I found somethin' here I want ya to have.
It's not much
just a story
but it's all I've got
so take it.

What paper planes and empty seats most have in common
is that they are best made by children still learning how to ride things out.

On the face of her phone
Wileen programs a message to herself
so that when the alarm clock rings
the screen flashes:
EVERY DAY IS ONE DAY LESS.
EVERY DAY IS ONE DAY LESS.
For some people
happiness
it's just a reduction in suffering.
Jordan.
Jordan tattoos the words
FORGIVE ME
in thick black letters
down the inside of his arm
so that when he looks at his wrist
he will remember not to hate himself so much.
What he keeps forgetting
is that there is life after survival.

Every moment is a brand new baby, Baby.
Every vow is a brave new voice.

The future gets no say in who we are.

I'm gonna roll outta here one day, I just might not get to drive

It's just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it
but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open

You can call me an angry ghost when I'm gone, or laugh into my disposition. But my mom will still see me as her wide-eyed wanderer out behind the garage inventing ways to fend off dog attacks that will probably never happen.

Listen, I'm not entirely comfortable being human.

The first time my town saw the sky it sucker-punched us in the throat, left us breathless, said, I'm gonna keep you awake some nights without touching you. You'll make it up, the pain, you always do.

And if we really do get what we give,
then I give up,
so I can get up

Lord, let me write,
leave me autistic and typing
until my windows bust into a thousand silver doves
and I know the poem is done.

Listen, I know there were days you wanted to die

when the sky was so clear
you'd stand obnoxious underneath it
begging for stars to shoot you
just so you could feel at home.

I know about the ways you misplaced all the right words,
stockpiled every important social cue you ever missed
from the first time you learned you were wrong,
waited to make it right
once everyone stopped watching.

I know you let them beat up your beauty in bed
because redemption was still alive in you, howling relentless, gathering strength.
Felt like ecstasy when they pounded it out of you in the hard dark.
Those days of dead weather
got all strung together
and they spoke for you,
wore you down to telling everyone here it was a good life
so you could run back into the wails of your windfight.

I know the parts of your past that haunt you the most
are the days you weren't being yourself,
and I know that's why most of your past haunts you.
There were so many who found you out,
and they were right.
You were good.

So
un-
numb.

Everything is out there. That's why they call it everything.

Knowing me is easy. You can still twist your hair and feel silly. Look up the word tacky and have a salad. But when we're together you pull bread apart with your fingers into bites sometimes so small I gotta remind you, Peach, it is okay to be hungry.

Step into this experience
with the goose bumps
in your heartbeat

Others, with halos shaped like rollercoasters you'd stand in line to ride twice.

I keep forgetting to put focus on my to-do list.

Everybody knows that smiling is for little girls, the gays and certain kinds of fish who are smiling by accident.

There was a typewriter buried alive in that horse, the one I road to get out of the flood.

What children
and the landing of a plane
most have in common
is that they are best made
by a line drive of pilot lights guided
through a single tambourine
across the day we met
in a field of wet metal hands on The Gospel of Lightning.

If we were created in God's image, then when God was a child he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions.

Everyone has some they can't contain.

Forte is French ... for blanket fort.